Wolfgang Van Halen Shares Sentiments About Grammy Loss
Wolfgang Van Halen's Mammoth WVH didn't take home the Grammy for Best Rock Song at the awards ceremony last night (April 3), but he's not feeling down about it. The rocker shared his sentiments about the loss in a post on Twitter, noting how grateful he feels to have been nominated at all.
Mammoth WVH's debut single "Distance," which was written for Eddie Van Halen, was nominated for the Best Rock Song award along with Foo Fighters, Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon and Weezer.
"We came, we saw, but we did not conquer and that's okay! I got to have a wonderful night with the two most important women in my world," Van Halen wrote. "Such an honor to be nominated for the first song I ever released on my own, in a category with artists I've looked up to my entire life. I don't know if that'll ever fully set in."
"Pop didn't win the first time he was nominated too, so it looks like I'm following in his footsteps quite nicely. Who knows what the future holds. All I know is I'm feeling pretty damn grateful. What a wild experience this was."
Eddie Van Halen was nominated for two Grammy awards in 1985 in the Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal category with Van Halen's "Jump," as well as Best Rock Instrumental Performance with his own track "Donut City." However, he didn't win until 1992 with For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.
Van Halen's mother, actress Valerie Bertinelli, accompanied him at the ceremony last night, along with his girlfriend Andraia Allsop.
"I mean, the song that Wolfie wrote is absolutely stunning, gorgeous and it's really beautiful that he was honored for it, and for songwriting. Because that is the first thing that really stuck out to me, was like, 'Wolf, you are a songwriter. That is the hardest part about being a musician,'" Bertinelli told ET at the event.
Mammoth WVH lost the Best Rock Song Grammy to Foo Fighters, who took home the award for the Medicine at Midnight song "Waiting on a War." Van Halen has spoken quite a bit about his admiration for Foo Fighters, citing them as the inspiration for his decision to perform all of the instrumentation on his first album, and future ones as well.
"I'll definitely do it again, just because it's so much fun. At first it was like a personal challenge, I wanted to see if I could do it just like Dave Grohl did with the first Foo Fighters album — that's what I was really inspired by," the musician told us in an interview. "It was like, 'I can play it all too, why don't I try to do this?' And after having done it, I can say that it was so much fun and so rewarding to put it together that I'm really excited to do it again."
He also named Foo Fighters as the "big dream" band he'd want to tour with, so it's really nice that he band was able to share the nomination with were his heroes.